Invention relates to fingerprint recognition and more particularly to fingerprint recognition where only a partial fingerprint is obtained.
Conventional methods for fingerprint recognition rely on the center of the fingerprint whorl (cores) or the place where three different fingerprint ridge flows intersect (deltas) to align the test image with the reference image.
Prior art methods are inadequate where only a partial fingerprint is acquired.
Therefore, there is a need for a fingerprint recognition method that can extract useful fingerprint information when a partial fingerprint is acquired.
A method for fingerprint recognition comprises the steps of feature extraction and pattern recognition.
During feature extraction, an iterative gamma correction process using two available gamma curves are adopted to compensate the moisture effect of the fingerprint image. Dynamic thresholding and ridge flow extraction is applied to each 8xc3x978 image block to assign intensity values and develop a directional map. Directional morphological filtering is applied to link the broken ridges.
During pattern recognition, an adaptive pattern alignment technique uses every minutia point on the fingerprint as a reference point for alignment.